What the Philadelphia 76ers can learn from 1983 title team

3. Deep six a deep bench

You do not have to go very deep in your bench to win a championship. The 1983 Sixers basically went eight-deep with three of them what we call now journeyman role players.

Of course, if you have five future Hall of Famers (Jones, Erving, Malone, Cheeks are in, Toney if not for foot injuries would have been), you do not exactly need a Lou WIlliams to provide a spark as a sub.

For ‘fit’ purposes, Jones came off the bench and bruising power forward Marc Iavaroni started, but Jones got starters minutes.

Outside of the main 5, coach Billy Cunningham in the finals used just Iavaroni, a guy who played physical defense and hit the boards hard, Clint Richardson, a defensive-oriented guard who had a decent shooting stroke and had started early in his career, and Clemon Johnson, a solid veteran backup center who could play Abdul-Jabbar for a few minutes without killing you.

Importantly, all three knew their roles. They were OK with not getting the ball. With a team with so many big scorers, they knew they were there to do the little things. Were they going to get big contracts out of this? No, but they all got a ring.

The current Sixers are probably a little deeper than the 1983 team.

Cunningham could not call on a 3-point shooter like Furkan Korkmaz (there was the three-pointer back them but it was no big deal), or a defensive whirlwind like Matisse Thybulle. Horford is probably better than Clemon Johnson when he plays backup center and Shake Milton might be a little better offensively than Richardson, although not as good on defense, yet.

Lessons learned: Of course, Brett Brown does not have five future hall of famers to roll out, so he needs a little more punch off the bench than Cunningham did.

There have been some major NBA finals performances from guys off the bench (like Andre Iguodala) but 1983 shows, if you have the horses, it is not a requisite that you must have a deep bench.